Firefighters with the New Orleans Fire Department have resumed fighting a stubborn fire on swampy land south of the Michoud Boulevard exit of Interstate 10 and near the Maxent Canal that was blamed for a series of deadly vehicle accidents in December and January.

View full sizeDavid Grunfeld, The Times-PicayuneThe New Orleans Fire Department extinguished the southern underground fire in eastern New Orleans earlier this year by pumping water from a nearby canal to the site using a 6-inch fire hose. January 17, 2012.

Contractors for developer John Cummings, owner of the mostly undeveloped 2,000-acre Pine Island property where the fires are burning, cleared an access path allowing firefighters to lay more than 1,800 feet of large diameter fire hose to the burn location.

The excavatiion crew has continued to clear large swaths of land adjacent to the fire, providing safe access for the firefighters. Earlier this year, officials measured temperatures underground at the blaze that ranged between 500 and 850 degrees.

The fire has been difficult to attack, firefighters have said, because it is on a 2 1/2 square mile land segment far from city fire hydrants and inaccessible with city fire trucks and equipment -- and because the fire is spreading through the drought-dried brush and the equally flammable, 2-foot-deep organic soils on the Pine Island property.

A similar strategy was used in January and early February to extinguish a 4.27 square mile fire at the southern end of the Pine Island property.

On Dec. 29, a 40-vehicle pileup on I-10 near the Michoud Boulevard exit, triggered by what was thought to be a combination of smoke from the fire and fog, killed two men and injured dozens more. A second fatal accident, also linked to smoke, occurred in late January near the same location. A third smoke-related accident, resulting in a minor injury to one passenger, happened in the same location on the morning of Jan. 4.

Both areas have been smoldering since last August, when an attempt by National Guard helicopters to drown them with buckets of water hauled from nearby waterways failed. The helicopters were only able to extinguish a smaller fire on an island in Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, east of the main southern blaze.